He is a native of Dijon, the city that gave birth to Bossuet, but Legrand is not that kind of Burgundian.  Several critics pretend to see in his work the characteristics of his native Cote d’Or; that, however, may be simply a desire to frame the picture appropriately.  Legrand might have hailed from the south, from Daudet’s country; he is exuberant as he is astute.  The chief thing is that he has abundant brains and in sheer craftsmanship fears few equals.  Like Whistler, his principal preoccupation is to suppress all appearance of technical procedures.  His method of work is said to be simplicity itself; obsessed by his very definite visions, he transfers them to the scratched plate with admirable celerity.  Dry-point etching is his principal medium.  With his needle he has etched Montmartre, its cabarets, its angels—­in very earthly disguise—­its orators, poets, and castaways, and its visiting tourists—­“God’s silly sheep.”  He has illustrated a volume of Edgar Poe’s tales that displays a macabre imagination.  His dancers are only second to those of Edgar Degas, and seen from an opposite side.  His peasants, mothers, and children, above all, babies, reveal an eye that observes and a brain that can co-ordinate the results of this piercing vision.  Withal, he is a poet who extracts his symbols from everyday life.

This is what Camille Mauclair said of him at the time of his debut: 

“An admirably skilful etcher, a draughtsman of keen vision, and a painter of curious character, who has in many ways forestalled the artists of to-day.  Louis Legrand also shows to what extent Manet and Degas have revolutionised the art of illustration, in freeing the painters from obsolete laws and guiding them toward truth and frank psychological study.  Legrand is full of them without resembling them.  We must not forget that besides the technical innovation [division of tones, study of complementary colours] impressionism has brought us novelty of composition, realism of character, and great liberty in the choice of subjects.  From this point of view Rops himself, in spite of his symbolist tendencies, could not be classed with any other group if it were not that any kind of classification in art is useless and inaccurate.  However that may be, Louis Legrand has signed some volumes with the most seductive qualities.”

Gustave Kahn, the symbolist poet who was introduced to the English reading world in one of the most eloquent pages of George Moore, thinks that Legrand is frankly a symbolist.  We side with Mauclair in not trying to pin this etcher down to any particular formula.  He is anything he happens to will at the moment, symbolist, poet, and also shockingly frank at times.  Take the plate with a pun for a title, Le paing quotidien ("paing” is slang for “poing,” a blow from the fist, and may also mean the daily bread).  A masculine brute is with clinched fist about to give his unfortunate partner her daily drubbing.  He